Room Acoustic Treatment

Recently, a few customers asked me about those audio systems' photos that I posted in Facebook. Then, the subject of acoustic treatment brought into discussion.

I was quite surprised that many still use acoustic panels especially those absorption panels without knowing the usage as well as putting it in the wrong place. Some have the whole front wall with only absorption panels. Bad idea.

There should be a degree of 'check and balance' when it comes to room acoustic. Over treat the room, it sounds dead in it. High frequency and mid frequency suffer. Your ears 'tell' you that there is a uneasiness in it. The sound no longer sounds lively.

Before going for acoustic treatment, one must know what is the issue that he is facing. Without knowing the problem, you cannot troubleshoot it. For a start, the basic fundamentals of acoustic treatment normally will be done such as corner traps and first reflection point treatment. 

We have touched on the topics of acoustic treatments in this blogspot. You may refer to it as a guideline.

Room Acoustics : Is it same for Hi-Fi and Home Theatre

Home Theater Acoustics by Acoustic Sciences Corp

Room Acoustic

I am glad that these customers heeded my advice by taking off some of the panels that were put in wrong places. They hear improvements in their stereo system as well as HT. Sometime more does not necessary means better.

Have a nice weekend.

Skyline Diffuser for sale

Size : 2' x 2'
Material : Styrofoam
Price : RM140 per piece

Clearing the remaining stock of this diffuser as the local manufacturer no longer making it.

Room Acoustic. Is it same for Hi-Fi and HT?

Many people did ask me about this question; Is acoustic treatment for Hi-Fi same as acoustic treatment for home theater? The answer is no. There are some differences between these two.

While employing sound treatment to a room is important, one should not over do it and know the basic rule. As Art Noxon puts it:

"I'd rather listen to a mid-fi system in a high-end room than a high-end system in a mid-fi room, any day."

There are some differences between acoustic treatment for Hi-Fi and home theater. For that, I have append 2 articles on basic room treatment for your reading. I do hope that you will find it useful if you are to embark on room treatment.

1. Hi-Fi listening room

2. Home Theater

On that note, we are in the midst of upgrading our acoustic treatment for our demo room to provide an even better enjoyment to our customers.

Good article on home theater acoustics by Acoustic Sciences Corp

There are many occasions that we were being asked about the importance of room acoustic by customers. Many failed to address the problem while some think that by buying a better system, the problem can be minimized, which is wrong.

A good system in a bad acoustic room will sounds just as bad. That is why room acoustics is very important and should be dealt with in order to truly enjoy your HT or hi-fi system.

This article is very informative and we find it to be useful for other HT enthusiasts as well as audiophiles. As the article is very long, we only extract a portion of it. For the remaining, you may click at the attached link.

Happy reading.

Home Theater Acoustics

One of the first things the novice acoustician does upon entering a room is to deliver a sharp clap of the hands. This is followed by a grave shake of the head and comments about how bad the room sounds. Next comes a proposition to fix the room and the fee. The unsuspecting client then administers a sharp hand clap, nods the head in agreement, and gives the guru a retainer. The only problem here is that these people are busy buying and selling modifications to the sound of their own hand clap. We don't listen to a speaker while holding it in our hands, yet we can be tempted to consider acoustics based on the sound of our own hand clap.

Home theater audio systems have an ambiance channel. It usually delivers a bandwidth-limited (no bass), mono signal to a pair of speakers that have been mounted high on the wall and to the side of the listener. If you stand on a chair and clap your hands in the location of the ambiance speaker, you will hear a very funny and undesirable sound effect. Is this really something we can hear? If so, do we want to listen to this sound effect or provide it to our clients? If not, there might be something we can do about flutter echo colorations.

THE ACOUSTIC CLAP TEST

On a practical basis, the only time that a self-administered and self-audited hand clap is directly relevant to anything in audio is when the recording engineer is setting up mikes in a studio. Only in this special circumstance does the desired audio signal leave from and return to the same place. Listening to one's own hand clap duplicates this round trip, acoustic process and thereby is a relevant test. If someone ever wants to know how a loudspeaker sounds to the listener, a different technique must be followed, one that mimics the actual speaker/listener acoustical path.

A hand clap contains only high frequencies. For a loudspeaker, the high frequencies are directional, forward of the speaker box. To properly administer a hand clap that mimics the high-frequency beaming pattern of a loudspeaker, the hands must meet at waist height while the clapper is facing the same direction that the speaker does. The body of the clapper blocks the expansion of the clap sound backwards. The listener is no longer in the clapper position, the listener is now seated in the listening position. This time, the hand clap is cast forward from the speaker position and is heard by the real listener. It is how the listener hears the speaker that counts and not so much how the speaker sounds to itself, at least in hi-fi playback settings.

In order to properly evaluate the consequence on the listener of the strange sound we heard when standing on the chair and clapping our hands overhead and near the mounting position of the ambience speaker, we must repeat the test while a listener is seated in the listener's chair. True enough, in this case, the zing we hear when we clap is also heard by the listener. And so, is the sound we hear, good, bad, or inconsequential? Certainly this sound effect is distracting and that alone is enough to warrant its eradication. On the other hand, we want to retain an overhead liveliness so as to promote the ambience signal. We can't sacrifice the lively quality of the overhead space in the room, yet we must try to get rid of its distracting effect known as flutter echo.

For more info :

FLUTTER ECHO/FLUTTER TONES

Acoustic Panels are now being available

Need solution to your room acoustic problem? Good news! We have just acquired acoustic absorption panels for room treatment.

1. Corner Bass Traps with adhesive tape


NRC about 1.35
Dimension : W 1ft D 1ft H 2ft
Retail Price: RM180 per piece

2. Pyramids absorption panels with adhesive tape


NRC about .95
Having 4 sides exposed on each pyramid yields more sound wave diffusion.
Dimension : W 2ft H 4ft
Retail Price : RM170 per piece

3. Studio foam absorption panel

NRC about .70
It serves to spread sonic energy out in the time domain, as well as each absorbing a slightly different slice of the frequency spectrum.

Dimension : W 2ft H 4ft
Retail Price : RM160 per piece

Room Acoustic

This topic is very interesting especially of late that there are many of our customers beginning to realise the importance of room acoustic.

Never did I realise that the 'bug' start 'biting' each one of them at a rapid rate. I have always stretch that room acoustic is being ignored by most of us. A good system in a poor acoustic room is just as bad as a poor system.

Not all of us can afford the luxury of a dedicated room or a specially designed room for music or home theater. However, all is not lost. We can still do some acoustic treatments (by either DIY or sourcing the acoustic treatment products) to rectify or minimise the problems.

DIY will be the cheaper route to go. Only that you need some tools and a little bit of skill to do that. The end result might not be as good looking as the commercially available products but the satisfaction derived from it is PRICELESS (We shall deal on that later as we are going to cover on the DIY project by a fellow HT enthusiast)

Before that, hold on to your horses. Don't start buying those rockwool, building frames and so forth. One needs to understand acoustic principles before embarking on the 'handyman' DIY journey.

There are many articles online that explain in great length on this topic. Here is one of the website that provides such informative articles.

http://www.audioholics.com/education/acoustics-principles/

One will ask what sort of treatment to be used. Well, that very much depends on the room itself. Bass traps, diffusor, absorption panel, etc. are the most commonly found treatment available.

Ethan Winer, the acoustic guru done a very good with his useful website.

http://www.ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html

It might take some time to digest the many articles but it is very useful. If one understands it and start applying it in his/her room, the end result would be very satisfying.

Having said that, how could the WAF slips my thought?